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I think B&H tried to move from a film studio equipment company to educational products, and ultimately simply slapping their name on cheap Asian-made binoculars, pest repellers, personal slide projectors, audio equipment, walkie-talkies, and other gadgets and selling them as mail-order through late night infomercials that drove them into financial ruins. Some investment company bought the name and relaunched recently. Same business strategy - put B&H name on white-labelled crap.

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The Company was Bell&Howell.
This company on TV shows the Bell&Howell, But Pronounces it Bell+Howell.

I Don't think it is the SAME COMPANY.
Just a Knock-Off.

I No Longer accept Private Messages on here.
All Emails to me Must Contain the Word \"Electronic\" in the \"Subject Line\"
or they go Directly to my Junk Mail Folder.
Email me at: chemelec@hotmail.com
Website: http://chemelec.com

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HK was Harmon Kardon, the American audio systems company starting in 1953. When Kardon retired, Harman bought the JBL speaker company and marketed the first stereo cassette recorder/player that had the Dolby noise reduction system. Harmon was appointed into the American government then had to sell Harmon International, to Beatrice Foods who knew nothing about audio systems or how to sell them and lost a lot of profits. When Harmon left the government he re-bought his company back from Beatrice Foods for almost half the price he sold it for. When Harmon retired recently, the Harmon International company was sold to Samsung for 8 billion USD. The list of excellent audio companies owned today by Harmon International is too long to list here.

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HK was Harmon Kardon, the American audio systems company starting in 1953. When Kardon retired, Harman bought the JBL speaker company and marketed the first stereo cassette recorder/player that had the Dolby noise reduction system. Harmon was appointed into the American government then had to sell Harmon International, to Beatrice Foods who knew nothing about audio systems or how to sell them and lost a lot of profits. When Harmon left the government he re-bought his company back from Beatrice Foods for almost half the price he sold it for. When Harmon retired recently, the Harmon International company was sold to Samsung for 8 billion USD. The list of excellent audio companies owned today by Harmon International is too long to list here.

I visited Bose and Harmon International (Samsung) in the past month. Two completely different mentalities when specifying materials and manufacturing methods. Look at the list of subsidiaries for Harmon on Wikipedia, all the kings of American Audio have been assembled under one roof at Harmon. Whoever runs Bose managed to turn an innovative audio research company into a cost minimizing, technology minimizing marketing company.

Not in the HiFi world, it's always been considered (VERY) over priced and of relatively poor performance and quality, it's no coincidence that Bose advertise in 'Life Style' magazines and not HiFi magazines, nor do they ever have reviews done in the HiFi magazines (as poor as they are for reviews anyway).

Bose is usually said to stand for Buy Other Sound Equipment

To be fair though it does tend to have interesting facilties, and appeals to it's target market, where accurate and quality sound reproduction isn't a concern.

Active Member

Just as an addendum to #8, it's "Harman" not "Harmon", unless it's been changed or marketed differently in different parts of the world. https://www.harman.com/
One of the two big global groups in pro audio (and lighting), the other being Music Group, which grew out of Behringer.
Harman recently took the remains of UK console makers Soundcraft out of the country, prompting much sadness & nostalgia across the industry.

The Hewlett Packard thing is interesting: Of course, what was HP continues to be a leading electronic instrument maker, but the marketeers seem to feel that it's more important to keep the brand continuity in ink and toner, and that the reputation of the test/measurement gear is strong enough to withstand re-branding. It surprises me that having their ink associated with cutting-edge lab gear doesn't appeal to them, but there you go.

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In my past hifi days, British and German products were not available in Canada except the Blaupunkt car radio with a cassette tape deck I bought because it was the only one available that recorded, then I souped it up and made it hifi.
My first stereo speakers were Acoustic Research and I still use one every day. The other one has a broken woofer flexy wire. I recommended a KLH system to a friend.

I never liked Bose until I attended a hifi demo and I could not find the sub-woofer. Small speakers had covers that made them look large then the covers were removed and I gasped at the good bass from the little speakers. Recently there was a tiny Bose Bluetooth speaker system on demo at Costco. It sounded fantastic but its cost was tremendous. My son bought me a cheap Chinese copy that I never use.